That’s Not Fair - 50 Days of Hope

That’s Not Fair

If you’ve ever been around children very long, you’ve probably heard them say, “That’s not fair!” My own kids said it zillions of times, sometimes daily during those trying teenage years. But if we’re honest, it’s not only children who want things to be fair. It’s human nature for all of us to long for fairness . . . and that can make the diagnosis of cancer especially difficult.

You may feel it’s unfair for you or your loved one to have cancer because you’re too young, or you’ve taken such good care of your body, or you’ve hardly been sick a day in your life, or you’ve already had to face cancer with another relative, or you have enough other problems.

I really believed—and still do—that my colon cancer diagnosis was very unfair. My good diet, exercise, young age, and healthy living should have prevented it, but they didn’t. Every doctor I met shook his head and said I had done everything right not to get cancer.

Cancer is very unfair. Even if you “did” something to get it or didn’t do something not to get it, it’s still unfair. Maybe you are a smoker diagnosed with lung cancer. Cancer is still unfair, because only about 20 percent of smokers develop lung cancer. Maybe you quit smoking twenty or thirty years ago and you still got cancer. Hardly fair.

Perhaps you didn’t get regular mammograms, Pap smears, or PSAs, and now you have cancer. Guess what? It’s still not fair, because lots of people don’t get those screening tests and don’t get cancer. Besides, some people get them faithfully and the cancer isn’t even detected! That seems even more unfair.

I know so many people who have had to deal with a terribly unfair diagnosis of cancer:

Like Peggy and Nick, who married after both their spouses died, only to have Peggy diagnosed with multiple myeloma a month after their wedding.

And Michelle and Jamie, in their twenties, who six months after they said “I do” found Michelle had Hodgkin’s disease and later learned a bone marrow transplant would leave her unable to bear children.

And Doris, who just got her mantle cell lymphoma in remission, only to be diagnosed with another rare cancer, leiomyosarcoma.

And Lynn, a never-smoked health nut, diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of forty-eight.

And Ron, whose mother and brother both died from cancer while he was fighting his own battle with colon cancer.

I don’t know if I ever said it out loud after my diagnosis, but I definitely thought it many times: This is not fair. And another question I never voiced but really wanted answered: If God really loved me so much, why did He allow an unfair thing like cancer to strike my life?

Then I learned a life-changing lesson from author Philip Yancey:

Don’t confuse life with God.

In Yancey’s book Disappointment with God, he writes about a man named Douglas whom he interviewed because he thought Douglas might feel great disappointment with God. Life, as Yancey describes it, had been very unfair to Douglas. While his wife was battling metastatic breast cancer, Douglas was involved in a car accident with a drunk driver and suffered a terrible head injury that left him permanently disabled, often in pain, and unable to work full-time.

But when Yancey asked this victim of unfairness to describe his disappointment with God, Douglas said he didn’t feel any and instead told Yancey the following:

I have learned to see beyond the physical reality in this world to the spiritual reality. We tend to think, “Life should be fair because God is fair.” But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life—by expecting constant good health, for example—then I set myself up for crashing disappointment. . . . If we develop a relationship with God apart from our life circumstances, then we may be able to hang on when the physical reality breaks down. We can learn to trust God despite all the unfairness of life.^a

Go ahead and say it.

It’s not fair that I have cancer.

It’s not fair that my loved one has cancer.

It’s not fair that this has happened to us right now.

Say it, but don’t be confused that life should be fair because God is.

Life is not fair, but God is not life.

Dear Lord, I’m so disappointed that this cancer has touched our family. It feels so unfair. Please help me to accept that life has been unfair to us but still to believe that You will be faithful to us. Please help me to develop a relationship with You apart from my circumstances and to learn to trust You despite the unfairness of life. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.